DELIBERATE INTRODUCTION OF NEW ANIMALS 245 



and not his desires, will remain their guiding law. So the 

 Stoats and Weasels taken from Great Britain to New Zealand 

 to check the spread of the Rabbit, having surfeited on rabbit 

 diet, promptly turned to the flightless Kiwis arid have brought 

 them and other small natives to the brink of extermination 

 an ignoble work in which they have been strongly abetted 

 by the wild descendants of the Pigs introduced by Captain 

 Cook on two occasions in 1773, and by the Cats, Dogs and 

 Rats of later importation. The creatures set loose in Australia 

 to police the rabbit warrens have themselves become poachers, 

 and the unique native ground fauna of Australia, as well as 

 the shepherd's flocks, has suffered severely. The Macaque 

 Monkeys introduced to Mauritius by the Portuguese have 

 all but exterminated Mayer's Pigeon (Nesaenas mayeri], 

 whose nests, eggs and young they destroy. 



Scotland furnishes many illustrations of these varying 

 results of the introduction of new animals; but since, even 

 in countries colonized in comparatively recent years, there 

 is already insuperable difficulty in tracing the steps of the 

 spread or decline of an introduction, it is natural to suppose 

 that the existing records of Scottish experiments, some of 

 them carried out hundreds of years ago, would furnish 

 only hints for a story rather than a detailed history. 



For the sake of imposing some arrangement upon what 

 are after all results of a medley of human whims, I shall 

 consider the introductions in three groups in sequence of 

 their human importance ; the first comprising those animals 

 which man brought, thinking of his own welfare, the second 

 those which he brought for the ends of sport, the last those 

 which he set free for a variety of reasons or for no reason 

 at all, but mainly for his amusement or his pleasure. 



